Fair Play
by Laura Schiller
Summary: Based on "The Fight" and "Tsunkatse". Chakotay finds Seven using his boxing program to battle a few personal demons. Written for Alaster Boneman, who requested a C/7 story.


Fair Play

By Laura Schiller

Based on: _Star Trek: Voyager_

Copyright: Paramount

"Computer, begin Chakotay Training Program 15-Beta."

" _That program is already active,"_ said the computer.

Chakotay walked in anyway, expecting Tom or Harry to greet him with another half-joking challenge to a sparring match. He'd set the program as public, leaving it available for any of _Voyager_ 's crewmates who wanted to use it to stay fit. (He rather liked the idea of punching Tom, although not as much as he would have during their first year.)

The last person he expected to see in the ring was Seven of Nine.

 _Damn, she's good,_ was his first involuntary thought.

He felt guilty for how much he'd admired her in the Tsunkatse arena, knowing she'd been forced into it against her will. He'd been the first to comm their shipmates for help in rescuing her. But here, on _Voyager_ 's holodeck, she was clearly doing this because she wanted to, and Chakotay felt free to admit to himself that she was magnificent to watch.

She moved like a wildcat, leaping, dodging and striking so fast that her body was a blur. She used the ropes and posts of the ring to her advantage, climbing up and jumping down on her opponent from above. She was fearless; unlike Chakotay, she didn't hesitate to move in close and take as much punishment as she dished out. The virtual opponent, a Norcadian woman of about her own size and weight, was getting tired. She always bounced back up again, but it was obvious from the way she swayed on her feet that the fight couldn't last much longer.

Neither of them noticed Chakotay watching them from the dimly lit corner where the lockers stood. The opponent wasn't programmed to notice, and Seven, as always, was focusing on her task with the single-mindedness of the Borg.

The Boothby character stood outside the ring with a towel slung over his arm, watching intently. He caught Chakotay's eye and nodded a greeting, but returned his attention to the fight right away.

The pride on the holographic trainer's face slipped away, replaced by outrage.

Seven had knocked her opponent to the floor and jumped on her, pummeling her with both fists. The Norcadian struggled to throw her off, but couldn't even raise her arms to protect her head. One of her nose ridges cracked, blood spraying across them both. Seven's face wore the same look she must have had in the arena. The feral gleam in her eyes was both beautiful and frightening.

Eight seconds passed. Nine. Ten. Eleven.

"Stop!" called Chakotay.

In the same instant, Boothby took a whistle from around his neck and blew an ear-piercing note of warning.

" _End round three,_ " said the computer.

The Norcadian vanished into thin air, causing Seven to tumble down onto the mat. Boothby climbed up the steps, ducked under the ropes, and hauled her roughly to her feet.

"The hell were you thinking?" he barked. "Never hit 'em when they're down, that's in the Queensberry Rules! You could've killed her! That's not how we do things 'round here, get it? One more stunt like that and I'll have you disqualified!" He caught her by the shoulders and shouted up into her face, as he had sometimes done when young Cadet Chakotay was being particularly foolish.

"Computer, deactivate Boothby!" she snapped, knocking his hands away and shoving him back before he, too, dematerialized.

Chakotay had half a mind to yell at her too - he felt that even a simulation of his old mentor deserved more respect - until he saw that she was trembling. Not just with adrenaline, but with horror.

She stood with her back against a corner post, looking down at her heavily gloved hands as if she couldn't believe the damage they had just done.

Chakotay almost turned to leave her to her privacy, but he couldn't. He was a private man himself, but there were some battles you couldn't fight alone.

"Hello, Seven." He stepped forward into the light.

She whirled, throwing her arms up in an instinctive position of defense, before recognizing him and standing to Starfleet attention instead. "Commander! How long have you been there?"

"I saw you fight. You're very talented."

"Irrelevant. I failed." A blush spread up from the V-shaped neckline of her green top all the way to her forehead – shame, he realized, as she began pulling off her gloves without looking him in the eye. "It happened again, just as it did in the arena. I lost control. Why do I always lose control?"

She tossed the gloves into an empty locker, slammed the door, and tugged on the bandages around her hands. Boothby must have wrapped them for her. In the arena she'd worn gloves equipped with bioplasmic charges capable of killing an opponent, but no bandages.

"Here, let me … "

Chakotay took her right hand in his and began to unwrap the cloth, as gently as he could. Her fingers had reddened against her Borg implants, as if their metal edges had chafed against her human skin. It looked painful, but he couldn't help but notice that when he touched her, she stopped shaking.

"You're angry," he said. "You have every right to be." Not just because of Penk and his people, either; that was only the tip of the iceberg. "Sometimes it's healthy to lose control and just let everything out. That's what the holodeck is for."

"My trainer was not a hologram," she said bitterly, snatching her hand away as soon as it was free, and turning away from him so that she could undo the other set of bandages herself. "I nearly killed him."

Chakotay remembered the exhausted man who had been lying on the floor at her mercy when they'd both materialized on _Voyager_ 's transporter platform. "The Hirogen? That was your trainer?"

He had no sympathy for the Hirogen after the horrific World War II simulation they'd put his crew through, but it had been impossible not to feel sorry for that man.

"He wanted to die." She still faced away from him, but he could see her shoulders slump. "He considered death his only escape from the arena, so he trained me to kill him. He … he taunted me. He called me weak, imperfect. I was so angry … I came so close to betraying everything the Captain and the Doctor taught me."

 _Clever son of a bitch,_ Chakotay thought with grudging respect. The Hirogen must have read her very well to learn that, ever since her separation from the Borg Collective, weakness and imperfection had become her greatest fears. It was still cruel of him to manipulate her like that, but who knew what years of violence and slavery could do to a man's conscience?

It was strange to see Seven so vulnerable. Her workout gear added to the impression; it was the same sleeveless, shiny green leotard she had worn in the Tsunkatse arena. Chakotay had never seen her with bare arms before. The Borg implants on her left wrist and right bicep were less elegant than those on her hand and face. They sprawled over her skin like metallic bruises. Was that why she was always so covered up? Not that it was any of his business what she wore.

"You know," he said, "I used to have a similar problem with boxing. Still do, sometimes. I wasn't so much afraid of hurting my opponent, but I was afraid of being hurt. It amounts to the same thing: losing control. You're not the only one."

"How do you adapt?" she asked quietly.

"Boothby always says it's about the heart." He reached out to tap the sensor disc on her chest, but caught himself in time. "You can't control what the other person does, only what you do. You're up against yourself, he says, and that's all that matters."

Seven glanced at the row of mirrors lining one of the walls and frowned, as if she were sizing up an opponent and disliked what she saw.

"There are certain moments," she said, so quietly he had to step closer to hear her, "During a fight … when conscious thought retreats and instinct takes over. I have never experienced anything like this, except perhaps during music or dancing lessons … it feels … " She lifted her hands in an unusually vague gesture, lost for words.

"It's amazing, isn't it?" Chakotay knew all too well what she meant. It was what he'd always loved about boxing. "Mind, soul and body, completely at one."

"Exactly."

That must be a rare feeling for her, he realized, his heart twisting with unexpected sympathy. Seven's body, mind and soul had been a battlefield, Borg versus human, for the last two years. On some level he could understand that. He had spent his life torn between two worlds as well: Dorvan versus Earth, Maquis versus Starfleet, faith versus science. But at least his opposing sides were all human; hers were a different matter altogether.

"Is that what you're looking for in this program? Some kind of … inner balance?"

"Yes." She looked away again, fixing her eyes on the row of lockers instead of his face. "Without success, so far."

"Well, um … " He could hardly believe he was offering this, but it felt right. "If you could use another coach besides Boothby, I'd be glad to help."

Her eyes widened. She looked him up and down and hesitated, as if a new idea had just occurred to her. "Clarify, Commander. Do you mean that you and I should spar together?"

"Oh, no." Why was he the one blushing now? He hoped he was too tan for her to notice. "That wouldn't be fair. We're hardly in the same weight class."

Besides, there was only one circumstance in which he liked to enter a beautiful woman's personal space, and a boxing ring wasn't it. "I just meant I'd watch you, give advice, that kind of thing."

"The Pendari outweighed me as well." That warrior's gleam came back into her eyes. "But you are correct, Commander. I would appreciate a new instructor."

"Okay, then … get some rest. We can start tomorrow after your shift ends." He clapped her on the back in what he hoped was an encouraging, Boothby-like manner. "In the meantime, you might want to brush up on the Queensberry Rules, published in England in 1867 to ensure fairness and safety. Boothby was right about one thing – there'll be no Tsunkatse tactics in my program."

She nodded brusquely, pried the sensor disc off her top, and stuffed it into her pocket. "That is my intention, Commander."

As she headed for the holodeck doors, he saw her glance at the mirrors one last time. She tucked a loose strand of hair behind one ear, straightened her spine and lifted her chin, as if to prove to her reflection that she was not afraid. The fabric of her suit shimmered slightly as she moved.

"Oh, and Seven?"

"Yes?"

"One more thing. Can I see your hands?"

She held them out flat, palms down. Her Borg-enhanced hand looked better, but was still a little red.

He cupped her hands between both of his and blew a breath of air into them. Her own breath hitched in surprise, and when he straightened up to look at her, he saw that she was blushing just as fiercely as during the fight.

"My mother used to do that when I came home from high school after training," he said. "It always made me feel better."

"I doubt the medical efficacy of such a method," she said, with a smile that belied the stiffness of her tone. "But … thank you."


End file.
